Best Man in Wyoming

by Margot Dalton

Rex sat up late into the night with Danny, smoothing the damp curls from the little boy’s forehead, cuddling him and telling him long, fanciful stories about Scout the dog and Rex’s adventures with his little brother, who had been so much like Danny.

  Funny, he mused, how a disaster like this brought all the buried pain to the surface.

  Lindsay had finally been driven to confide her dreadful secret, and even Rex himself was talking aloud about things he hadn’t allowed himself to remember for years.

  But unlike Lindsay, Rex wasn’t tortured by his memories. Telling Danny about that long-dead little brother was actually a relief, a kind of cleansing that washed away decades of pent-up anguish. Rex found himself exhausted, but strangely light and free.

  He looked at Lindsay’s body in the sleeping bag next to the boys, her matted golden hair spilling onto the pillow, and wondered if there was anything in the world he could do to help her.

  Pushing her to call the police wouldn’t do any good, and would only make her more miserable. But until she could rid herself of the fear and shame of her experience, take command of her life and do the right thing, she’d never be free to love anyone.

  His heart ached with the frustrating irony of finally getting close to her, and then finding this insurmountable obstacle standing between them. At the same time he felt a flood of tenderness and love unlike anything he’d ever imagined.

  Rex could hardly bear to think that the force of his great love wasn’t able to protect her, but this time he knew it wasn’t enough.

  Involuntarily he reached to touch her shoulder, then drew his hand back and huddled in the shadows again, looking down at Danny.

  The cold penetrated to the core of Rex’s being. He looked longingly at the mass of warm sleeping bodies, wishing he could crawl in among them and give way to the yearning for sleep that drugged his mind and made his eyes heavy.

  A blanket slipped around his shoulders, and he felt a hard young body press close to him.

  “Go to sleep for a while,” Clint murmured in the darkness. “I’ll watch Danny.”

  Rex shook his head and savored the warmth of the blanket, clutching it across his chest. “I’ll be fine,” he whispered back. “Get some rest.”

  “You’re so damn stubborn,” Clint said, but there was a rough edge of affection in his voice. “Whoever thought a lawyer would have such guts?”

  Rex grinned in spite of himself. “Hey, lawyers are really macho guys, you know.”

  He held out the blanket and made a brief gesture of invitation. Clint hesitated, then settled down close to him. Rex let the blanket fall around the boy and held him in the crook of his arm, sighing with pleasure at the warmth. They huddled together in silence, listening to the stirring and occasional murmurs from the sleeping boys, and Danny’s labored breathing.

  “Is he going to be okay?” Clint asked.

  “I don’t know,” Rex said honestly. “He’s got some kind of internal infection at the site of that break in his leg. It’s swelling and looking more tender every time I check it. If we can’t get him to a doctor soon, I’m going to be damned worried.”

  “I feel like such a jerk.” Clint’s voice was hoarse with emotion. “What an ignorant stunt, putting those horses up front to pick the trail.”

  “You were mad at everybody,” Rex said quietly. “And being angry like that can make any of us do stupid things.”

  He felt Clint’s body stiffen with surprise. “How do you know what I was feeling?”

  “Because I went through pretty much all the same things when I was your age,” Rex said. “For a couple of years, I was so mad at the world I could hardly talk to anybody.”

  “You?” Clint pulled away to stare at him in the darkness.

  Rex drew the boy close to him again. “What did you think I was doing at Lost Springs when I was a teenager? Attending summer camp?”

  “But you’re so...” Clint struggled for words. “You drive such a big car, and wear all those fancy clothes, and...”

  “Listen, Clint, and I’ll tell you a story.” While the boy sat close to him in silence, Rex talked once again about the kind of childhood he’d endured, and the shattering death of his mother and brother.

  “That guy killed them?” Clint asked in horror. “Right there in front of you?”

  “Right before my eyes,” Rex said quietly. “For a lot of years I felt guilty because I couldn’t stop him from doing it.”

  “But you were just a little kid,” Clint said. “Even younger than the Bernsteins over there, right?”

  “That didn’t stop me from feeling guilty,” Rex said. “And it sure didn’t stop me from hating everybody in the world.”

  “So what did you do?” Clint asked. “After they were killed, I mean.”

  “Well, mostly I did a whole lot of things I’m not very proud of.”

  “Like what?” Clint asked tensely.

  Rex went on to tell the boy things he’d never confided to anybody in his life, details about the time he’d spent on the streets before he finally arrived at Lost Springs Ranch, and some of the crimes he’d committed in order to survive.

  As he talked, he felt the boy’s body relax against him in a curiously childlike and trusting fashion. Rex cuddled the youth as if he were no older than little Danny.

  “So I know where you’re coming from, Clint,” he said. “I’ve been there. I’ve done worse things than you and still pulled my life together.”

  “You think I can pull my life together after all the shit I’ve been involved in?”

  “I know you can,” Rex said. “We wouldn’t have brought you to the ranch if we didn’t believe you had all kinds of potential, Clint.”

  The boy made a brief, choking sound. Rex stared tactfully at the fire while Clint struggled to compose himself.

  “But what if we don’t get out of this?” the boy said at last, in a low, strained voice. “What if Danny...what if he dies or something?”

  Rex leaned over to feel the little boy’s neck and forehead. Danny was in one of his brief spells of remission from the fever, sleeping comfortably, his skin cool to the touch.

  “Danny isn’t going to die,” Rex said firmly. “Not while you and I and Lindsay have breath in our bodies. We’ll get him out of here somehow.”

  “Lindsay can’t even stand to look at me,” the boy muttered, his voice breaking. “She hasn’t said a word to me all day. She hates me.”

  “She doesn’t hate you,” Rex said. “Don’t ever think that.”

  “Then why won’t she talk to me?”

  Rex looked again at her slim outline in the sleeping bag. “She isn’t talking to anybody right now,” he said. “Lindsay has her own problems to deal with, Clint. Believe me, she’s not thinking bad things about you.”

  “What kinds of problems does Lindsay have?” the boy asked.

  Rex remembered her whispered confession, her anguish as she told him the story of her torture and her subsequent fear. He thought about the four long years of suffering she’d endured and felt a lump rise in his throat again, almost choking him.

  “I can’t tell you,” he said at last. “It’s something she needs to work out on her own. But believe me when I say she’s not mad at you, Clint. She cares a whole lot about you, and wants to help you. We all do.”

  “You really love her, don’t you.”

  “Yes,” Rex said quietly. “I love her more than anything.”

  “So will you be getting married if we...when we ever get out of here?”

  “I don’t know,” Rex said, his heart aching. “That’s up to her, and she says it won’t happen.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because of these problems she has,” Rex told him. “There’s a whole lot of stuff Lindsay needs to deal with, and none of it’s going to be ea
sy.”

  “So, what can you do?”

  “Nothing, I guess, except keep waiting and help as much as I can.”

  “Before this trail ride,” Clint whispered, his voice barely audible over the steady pattering of rain, “I was planning to run away. First chance I got, I was heading back to Denver to get into the gang again.”

  Rex felt a brief chill of alarm. “I see. And what are you planning now?” he asked, trying to keep his voice casual.

  “If Lindsay doesn’t hate me,” Clint muttered, “I guess I’d like to stay at the ranch. I want to help with the smaller kids, and look after the horses, and learn all that stuff from Sam.”

  Rex smiled in the darkness and tightened his arm around the boy. “Now, that sounds like a better plan to me.”

  “And someday...”

  “Yes?”

  “I’d like to go to college and get some training to be a social worker. It’d be neat,” Clint said gruffly, “to help kids like you and me. There are thousands of them out there, you know.”

  “I know. The ranch can only help a handful of them, but every little bit helps.”

  “So you think I could do something like that?” Clint asked, clearing his throat.

  “I’m sure you could.” Rex hugged the boy again in the darkness. “Hey, man, if a smart-ass street fighter like me could become a fancy city lawyer, I guess anybody can do anything.”

  Clint made a strangled sound, and Rex realized it was the first time he’d ever heard the boy laugh.

  “I was wrong when I called you a fancy city lawyer,” Clint whispered. “I think you’re one of the toughest dudes I ever met.”

  “And don’t you forget it, kid.” Rex cuffed the boy’s shoulder in playful fashion, then moved reluctantly from the warmth of their shared blanket to check on Danny.

  The fever had reappeared as suddenly as it left, and Danny was chilled and shivering again. His teeth chattered as he tossed his head and uttered scraps of incoherent speech.

  Rex hurried to mash an aspirin in water and force it between the boy’s dry, chapped lips. Behind him Clint moved around with tense efficiency, adding more logs to the fire without being told and boiling a kettle of water for some tea to warm the little boy’s stomach.

  * * *

  THE MOOD among the searchers down at Bighorn Ranch was growing increasingly grim as each day passed with no sign of the missing hikers. Their search area was expanded all along the northern and southern base of the foothills in case the Lost Springs riders had somehow strayed off the usual trails.

  “But it’s useless,” Karl Fuller told a wet, weary group assembled in the ranch living room on the evening of the third day. “Farther up the slopes, the tree cover’s so thick a plane flying overhead probably couldn’t even see riders down below.”

  “But this is eight people with four horses,” one of the ranchers argued. “A group that big should be easy enough to spot.”

  “If they’re all still together,” another cowboy contributed, making a few people exchange startled, frightened glances. “And if they really do have those other horses.”

  “Why wouldn’t they still be together?” Sam asked sharply.

  “What if somebody fell into a cave? Or maybe a group of boys went off on their own and got lost. After all this time, you tend to start thinking something unusual must have happened.”

  Sam couldn’t bear it. He looked around, craning his neck to see if he could catch a comforting glimpse of Gwen in the kitchen, but there was no sign of her.

  Since that first night when Gwen held him while he cried on her shoulder, they’d barely had a word alone. More and more, he ached for just a few minutes with her, if only to sit quietly and feel the comfort of her presence.

  “They have no more than four horses,” one of the forest rangers was saying. “And they’re going to need all of them to pack supplies. That means they’re on foot, trying to make their way home in this rain.”

  “All the more reason they’ve got to be on a marked trail somewhere.” Karl frowned at the big map above the fireplace. “But if they were, dammit, we’d have seen them by now. We’ve covered practically the whole network of trails.”

  “So what do you think happened, Karl?” somebody asked. “Did a spaceship come down and carry them off, or what?”

  There was a dispirited ripple of laughter, quickly stilled.

  Jamie Tailfeathers came into the room carrying a steaming mug of coffee and a sandwich. Everybody sat a little straighter in their chairs, turning eagerly to look at him.

  The young Sioux artist was slim and handsome, wearing a trendy nylon jogging suit and leather cross-trainers. He had close-cropped hair and an easy, confident manner. Except for the small copper arrowhead dangling from one ear, he looked like a stockbroker or accountant off on a weekend jaunt.

  Jamie crossed the room with easy confidence and stood near the fireplace, bending to warm his hands before he faced the group.

  “I can’t find any tracks from the original party,” he said. “They left almost a week ago. It’s been raining ever since and the returning horses have come back down over their old trail.”

  The group digested this in silence.

  “But what I did find,” Jamie added, “is those horses that came home...they didn’t come in from any of Karl’s marked trails.”

  Still holding the coffee, he reached up with a slender, paint-stained finger to indicate a point on the map above the fireplace.

  “It’s hard for me to tell,” he continued while the group listened, mesmerized. “The trail is rocky, there’s been a lot of rain and we had to cross a few fast-running streams that hide all tracks. But we took one of the police dog handlers along this afternoon and he pretty much confirms my theory.”

  Jamie smiled his thanks to Karl Fuller, who handed him a riding crop to use as a pointer.

  “It looks like the horses came back down from a point above this trail here.” He indicated a thin line at the top of the map, an area that had not yet been searched because it went high into the mountains.

  Sam stared up in disbelief, then looked at the handsome young tracker.

  “Jamie, that can’t be true,” he protested. “You’re showing a point practically at the summit. Nobody in their right mind would take those kids so high.”

  “And don’t you always let the horses pick the trail?” Karl asked, turning to Sam.

  “That’s right.” Sam frowned. “None of our horses would head up that way. They’re trained to make a circle through the foothills, with just a day or two of high climbing to give the kids a thrill.”

  Jamie looked at him with sympathy. “In my opinion, Sam, your horses got way off track somehow. And,” he said gently, “I’m afraid your boys may be getting a lot more thrill than they bargained for.”

  Sam felt a clammy touch of dread. He settled back on the couch, listening to the rush of conversation around him.

  Karl and the forest rangers argued over whether they had enough information to warrant taking helicopters up into the mountain peaks in search of the missing boys. Rob Carter talked grimly about the rain and chill at higher altitudes, and the possible health dangers as a result of exposure.

  Because the local residents had such faith in Jamie Tailfeathers, it didn’t occur to any of the searchers to argue with his assessment. Many of these men had watched him find a trail across solid rock, searching out scraps of fallen shale, tiny bits of pollen brushed off shoes, traces of nettles dropped by passing animals.

  Eventually new rescue plans were made based on Jamie’s conclusions.

  The horseback forays were immediately disbanded, with the new approach being to fly groups up by helicopter as soon as it was daylight, and drop them on the higher trails after setting prearranged meeting points to fly in supplies and relief p
ersonnel.

  Sam listened to it all through a blur of fatigue. Embarrassing tears misted briefly in his eyes.

  Just tired, he thought, brushing impatiently at the tears with his shirtsleeve.

  A man got so worn-out, he didn’t know what he was doing.

  He got up and left, pulled his jacket from among a stack of them on a table on the back porch, then wandered out onto the ranch veranda and sat on the porch swing, staring up at the darkening mountains while rain drummed on the cedar shakes of the roof overhead.

  Somewhere up there in the forbidding expanse of mist-shrouded trees were Rex and his boys. And Lindsay, his darling girl...

  He brushed again at his eyes, then felt a gentle hand on his arm. Gwen was sitting on the swing next to him. She took hold of his hand and gripped it firmly in both her own. Sam felt a soothing warmth begin to steal over him, but all he could do was smile and mutter a brief hello.

  “Oh, poor Sam,” she whispered. “You’re just worn-out, aren’t you?”

  “I looked around for you the past couple of days,” he said. “But you’re always either busy in the kitchen or I can never find you.”

  “There’s so much work to do, feeding all these people.” Gwen leaned back in the swing, sighing. “Every now and then a bunch of us go upstairs and have a communal nap while the other shift is working.”

  “Have you been here the whole time?” Sam looked at her through eyes gritty with tiredness.

  “Twyla and I went home yesterday for a few hours to get fresh supplies and check on Brian. It was pretty hard for me to come back,” she confessed, her face turning pink. “But still, not as bad as I’d expected.”

  “You’re finding it hard because of all the work?” he asked in sympathy. “Or the discomfort of living here with so many other people?”

  “Oh, goodness, neither of those.”

  She shook her head so vigorously that the white curls bounced. Then she looked into his face as if searching for something.

  “You really don’t know, do you Sam? Nobody’s ever told you...about me,” she concluded awkwardly.

  “What about you?”